Georgia Tech offers online Masters Program

Beginning in January of 2014, the Georgia Institute of Technology (GA Tech) plans to partner with Udacity to offer a master's degree in Computer Science through an online course for a fraction of the cost a student would pay on campus. The rising debt for students because of student loans is currently under a hot debate in this country with President Obama touring the nation to speak about his plans for reducing the cost of college. Brendan Spaar believes that one way to reduce the cost of college is to take advantage of online course offerings like this. The price of the online course at Georgia Tech is around $6,600 ­which is much less than the $45,000 on-campus price. To make things even better, the courses will be online and free for those not seeking a degree! A developer in the IT industry would be crazy not to take advantage of this program. Companies such as Udacity and institutions like Georgia Tech are charged with making college more affordable. Let's hope that more companies and institutions participate in this program. Source: www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/education/masters-degree-is-new-frontier-of-study-online.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Kentucky restaurant serves up roadkill!

The next time you walk into a restaurant, Brendan Spaar advises you to pay close attention to the health inspection sheet that is posted near the entrance.  This sheet tells customers how well the food they are about to eat is prepared among other things.  Customers like Katie Hopkins who dined at the Red Flower Chinese Restaurant in Williamsburg Kentucky had no idea that they may actually be eating roadkill.  One day restaurant workers came in with a giant garbage can.  That's a little odd first of all to wheel a garbage can in through the front entrance in front of your customers and back into the kitchen.  What's even stranger though is that a tail was hanging out of the can!  A health inspector named Paul Lawson was called to the restaurant and he confirmed that the roadkill was indeed in the kitchen.  Now the explanation that the restaurant gives is that they found a deer on the side of the road and were going to butcher it in their kitchen for their own personal use.  I guess they didn't realize that in doing so they would contaminate all of the other food.  This makes me want to go inspect the kitchen of the next restaurant I eat at.  I will also keep my eyes open for large garbage cans with animal parts hanging out of them.

Source:  http://www.wkyt.com/wymt/home/headlines/Whitley-County-restaurant-shut-down-after-road-kill-found-in-kitchen-171867021.html

Neighbors sold puppy on Craigslist

That title may be a little misleading.  At first glance you would think: What's wrong with that? Right?  Well what if your neighbors sold YOUR puppy on the popular classifieds site Craigslist?  That changes things a little doesn't it?  Apparently Bailey, a Rottweiler puppy wandered with a golden retriever mix into the wrong yard last month and was promptly put up for adoption on the site .  The woman who put the puppy up on the site apparently called sherrif deputies asking what she should do with the dogs that came onto her property.  Obiously this woman has never seen dogs before if she doesn't know what to do when strange ones come on your property.  Brendan Spaar would have looked for a tag on the dog or put signs up in the neighborhood.  The good news is that police arrested and charged the woman for not making enough effort to find the dog's owner before selling it on Craigslist.  What a weird world we live in.

Source:  http://gma.yahoo.com/childs-slip-implicates-parents-sold-neighbors-dog-craigslist-173251849--abc-news-topstories.html

American Express to pay customers it over charged

American Express has said that it is going to pay out more than $85 million to customers that were charged late fees illegally.  Brendan Spaar is not sure how a late fee could be applied illegally but apparently they were.  More curious is that American Express is also hit with false promises of money rewards that never materialized and discriminating against applicants over the age of 35.  I had to read that second part twice because I always thought that this card was for people over the age of 35.  I am 31 years old and do not own an American Express because I am not in the financial capacity to spend enough to make up for the $75 a year charge to possess the card.  American Express isn't the only credit card company in hot water right now.  Earlier this year Discover and Capital One had to pay up.  Chase hasn't been hit yet so when someone asks me "what's in your wallet?" I can honestly say that it's not one of the Big Bad 3...

Source:  http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/01/pf/american-express-refund/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Dirty cities in the dirty south

So I was reading over the list of Travel+Leasure's America's Favorite Cities and noticed that a lot of the cities had something in common other than their size.  About half of the top 10 cities are located in the south.  I wonder if the magazine's readers have something against the south or if they just think big cities are dirty.  New Orleans came in as the 2nd dirtiest city in America and Atlanta Georgia ranked 5th despite a smoking ban recently inacted to keep cigarrette butts out of parks in the city.  Brendan Spaar thinks that keeping a city the size of a top 10 market clean is nearly impossible.  With that many people roaming around at all hours of the day and night, you're fighting a losing battle.  Click the source link to see the full list (spoiler alert: nearly the entire top 10 are the top 10 by population size)

Source:  http://travel.yahoo.com/ideas/america%E2%80%99s-dirtiest-cities.html

How to make money off of the 2012 Presidential election

You know the old saying, buyer beware?  Well this election season it's donor beware.  Apparently there's a PAC out there that is raising money by spoofing the online identities of legitimate political figures such as Mitt Romney, House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and even Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Allen West of Florida.  These websites look legit and appear to be created by the offices of the politicians depected on them.  These sites are nothing more than a phishing scheme created by an Arizona PAC called Coalition of Americans for Political Equality or CAPE.  While this tactic is grey and shady, no one will be arrested for this type fundraising.  It was only after National Journal Daily began investigating these sites did they learn that a PAC was actually behind them.  Brendan Spaar encourages anyone donating online to read all of the fine print before clicking the big read button.

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/look-alike-sites-funnel-big-money-to-mystery-pac/262150/

Things to do with your old iPhone

Here's a first world problem if there ever was one.  You want to get the new iPhone 5 but have no idea what to do with your old iPhone.  Brendan Spaar faced this same issue when he upgraded from the 3GS to the 4S last year.  Brendan ended up turning the 3GS into a standalone gaming iPod and using it without a wireless plan. 

Here are the top 5 other uses for that old iPhone (Use this as a topic during your next game of Family Feud!)

Give it to your children so they stop taking yours

Give it to your mom so she can finally see the light
 
Stream music

Donate to charity

Keep as a backup in case you lose your fancy new one.

Source:  http://news.yahoo.com/now-11-things-old-iphone-173431389--finance.html

Kentucky man arrested for shooting up homeowners meeting

Let's face it, homeowners associations can be frustrating at times.  You have to get everything approved by the board in order to keep the neighborhood looking nice.  Many people believe these boards are made up of busy bodies that have nothing better to do with their time.  Brendan Spaar pays to live in his community and is subject to the same charges. 

So this guy in Louisville, Kentucky decided to take his anger out on his homeowners association by bringing a gun to the meeting and opening fire, killing one and injuring another.  The whole dispute was over the height of his fence.  What really troubles me is that the guy pleaded not guilty to the crime.  If you aren't guilty then you believe that you did not commit the crime.  When you walk into a room with several witnesses and start shooting, I would think you are considered guilty.  Even more surprising is what his attorney said about his client in the bond hearing:

 Kahloon called him a "complex man" who "is not a danger to the community in the sense that this crime is not a random, violent crime."

I consider killing someone and injurying another to be a violent crime.  The deputies that arrested this man are sure to continue investigating the circumstances that lead up to this.  It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Source:  http://news.yahoo.com/1m-bond-man-accused-ky-homeowners-shooting-133722615.html

Steve Jobs has been reincarnated!

It doesn't get much weirder than this, folks.  According to a Buddhist group in Thailand, Steve Jobs, a devout Buddhist, has been reincarnated.  An abbot at a Buddhist temple claims that the inventor extraordinare has been reborn as a "celestial warrior-philosopher" and currently lives "in a mystical glass palace hovering above his old office at Apple’s Cupertino, Calif. headquarters."
That's not the weirdest part:

Among other things, he has said the reincarnated Mr. Jobs spends much of his time lounging in a glass palace resembling an Apple store. Phra Chaibul also has said the being formerly known as Steve Jobs is attended by 20 servants, who seem to resemble the Apple store ‘Geniuses’ who help customers set up their iPhones and other devices here on earth.

I'm not sure why a "celestial warrior-philosopher" needs 20 servants.  Maybe Jobs has become high maintenance in his afterlife. 

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/08/31/steve-jobs-has-been-reincarnated-as-warrior-philosopher-thai-group-says/

Disclaimer: Brendan Spaar does not own any Apple products.

The fate of electronics stores

I think that electronics stores will survive based on people's need for impulse buys.  Brendan Spaar was in need of a Playstation 3 a few months ago and rather than wait on eBay, he went to his local Gamestop store.  While the price was about $20 higher than eBay, it was worth it to have the system right in time for the holiday.  If you need a gift quickly you will pay the price for it.  I think we will still see electronic stores like Best Buy but they will be reduced to mall sized cubical stores instead of the big 20-30,000 square foot brick and mortar shops.

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/can-electronics-stores-survive-.html

Bank fires worker because he was arrested 50 years ago

This is a sad day when someone is fired for being arrested 50 years ago on a very small charge just because of new banking regulations that weren't even meant to regulate people like him.  This man was charged with dropping a fake dime into a washing machine 50 years ago (when he was a teenager in high school)!  Hopefully he will be able to appeal the decision.

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/wells-fargo-fires-iowa-worker-for-minor-1963-crime.html

Brendan Spaar does not like this at all.

Star Wars landspeeder recreated

This company called Aerofex has developed and tested a vehicle that oddly enough resembles the land speeder from the original Star Wars films.  While this is one step in the right direction toward flying cars, it is obvious that Aerofex doesn't feel that modern society can handle such a complicated and free flying vehicle:

Aerofex does not plan to immediately develop and sell a manned version. Instead, the aerospace firm sees the aerial vehicle as a test platform for new unmanned drones — heavy-lift robotic workhorses that could use the same hover technology to work in agricultural fields, or swiftly deliver supplies to search-and-rescue teams in rough terrain.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hover-vehicle-recalls-star-wars-bike-171401941.html

Brendan Spaar would buy one of these if they were available and priced affordably.

Proving honesty through tea?

This company called Honest Tea conducted a giant marketing campaign/social survey across the country to see which cities had the most honest people.  Kiosks of tea bottles were setup at sporting events and patrons were asked to leave a dollar in a jar if they wanted the beverage.  It was all on the honor system.  I have a problem calling this anything other than a marketing campaign because of where the survey was conducted.  The venues were all secure with the people inside having already paid to be there.  Everyone in attendance had the expectation of being monitored at all times so that probably influenced their honesty a little bit.  If they would have put the stand on a busy street corner in New Orleans or Atlanta I'm sure they would have had vastly different results.

Statistics from an undercover observer showed that visitors paid for the drink 91 percent of the time. That put New Orleans in a tie for 20th, with Atlantic City, N.J., San Antonio and Atlanta out of 30 cities where the experiment was conducted.

Source: http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2012/08/honesty_tea_experiment_shows_n.html#incart_river_default

Brendan Spaar contributed to this blog post.

'The Office' closes after this season

One of my favorite shows is going off the air and I have mixed feelings about it.  While I hate to see The Office end its 9 year run, I like seeing shows do it on their terms.  LOST got to go out with a bang and so did House.  I'd rather see The Office end naturally than see a whole new cast or have it end abruptly due to a ratings cancelation.

Though the show's ratings are healthy -- it is NBC's highest-rated scripted series -- contracts are expiring for most of the original cast, making it "the last chance for us to go out together and to make an artistic ending," Daniels said.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/21/showbiz/office-ends/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

These are photos that Brendan Spaar took.

The Shat is Back!

I don't see why Priceline.com walked away from Shatner in the first place.  They say it was because they wanted to move toward a fixed price model over a name your own price and the Negotiator's services were no longer needed.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  What I bet happened is Priceline's sales slumped without Shatner and they were forced to bring him back in a limited capacity.  The article that I linked below includes some other TV spokespeople.  My favorite ones besides Shatner are the Old Spice Guy and Mayhem from the Allstate ads.  I don't really care for Flo from Progressive as I find her annoying!

In a press release the company announced that "after plunging off a bridge to his presumed demise, the Priceline Negotiator, aka William Shatner, has miraculously been found alive in a new priceline.com TV spot."

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/priceline-negotiator-returns-other-ad-pitchmen-live-forever-151605519.html